Principal Architect Contract Job Trends in the UK excluding London

Principal Architect
UK > UK excluding London

The median Principal Architect daily rate in the UK excluding London is £688, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 31 October 2025.

The table below compares current contractor rates and summary statistics with the previous two years.

6 months to
31 Oct 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 381 355 403
Rank change year-on-year -26 +48 +91
Contract jobs requiring a Principal Architect 13 14 16
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 0.078% 0.083% 0.077%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.087% 0.091% 0.081%
Number of daily rates quoted 10 10 8
10th Percentile £596 £603 £384
25th Percentile £631 £669 £656
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £688 £719 £722
Median % change year-on-year -4.35% -0.38% +8.09%
75th Percentile £750 £784 £751
90th Percentile £1,375 £853 £783
UK median daily rate £700 £713 £688
% change year-on-year -1.75% +3.64% -2.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 2 4
Median hourly rate - £70.00 £76.53
Median % change year-on-year - -8.53% -
UK median hourly rate - £70.00 £76.53
% change year-on-year - -8.53% -

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
UK excluding London

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in the UK excluding London. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of contract jobs in our overall sample.

Contract vacancies in the UK excluding London with a recognized job title 14,929 15,449 19,649
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 89.66% 92.11% 93.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,235 8,855 13,064
10th Percentile £208 £219 £213
25th Percentile £363 £374 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £490 £500
Median % change year-on-year -3.06% -2.00% -
75th Percentile £575 £588 £600
90th Percentile £670 £675 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,432 1,080 1,273
10th Percentile £13.75 £14.73 £14.25
25th Percentile £16.95 £19.36 £18.00
Median hourly rate £25.08 £37.50 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -33.13% -15.73% +90.25%
75th Percentile £50.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £69.65 £73.75 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £37.50 £45.00
% change year-on-year -32.93% -16.67% +62.28%

Principal Architect
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings featuring 'Principal Architect' in the job title relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

Principal Architect job vacancy trend in the UK excluding London

Principal Architect
Daily Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Principal Architect job vacancies in the UK excluding London.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Principal Architect job vacancies in the UK excluding London

Principal Architect
Daily Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Principal Architect in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 31 October 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Principal Architect in the UK excluding London

Principal Architect
Hourly Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Principal Architect job vacancies in the UK excluding London.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Principal Architect job vacancies in the UK excluding London

Principal Architect
Contract Job Locations in the UK excluding London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Principal Architect within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 31 October 2025. The 'Rank Change' column provides an indication of the change in demand within each location based on the same 6 month period last year.

Location Rank Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Matching
Contract
IT Job Ads
Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months
Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
South East - 4 £663 - 4
Scotland - 3 £663 - 10
South West +4 2 - - 5
West Midlands -23 2 £1,250 +81.82% 2
Midlands -25 2 £1,250 +81.82% 4
Wales - 1 £750 -
East of England - 1 £600 - 3
Principal Architect
UK

Principal Architect Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the UK excluding London

For the 6 months to 31 October 2025, Principal Architect contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number of co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads across the UK excluding London region featuring Principal Architect in the job title.

1 6 (46.15%) Risk Management
2 5 (38.46%) Cost Management
3 4 (30.77%) Accounts Receivable
3 4 (30.77%) AI
3 4 (30.77%) AWS
3 4 (30.77%) Business Activity Monitoring
3 4 (30.77%) Cash Management
3 4 (30.77%) Cost Centre Accounting
3 4 (30.77%) Cost Control
3 4 (30.77%) Decision-Making
3 4 (30.77%) Generative AI
3 4 (30.77%) Profit Centre Accounting
3 4 (30.77%) Resource Allocation
3 4 (30.77%) SAP
3 4 (30.77%) SAP CO
3 4 (30.77%) SAP FI
3 4 (30.77%) SAP FI/CO
3 4 (30.77%) SAP S/4HANA
3 4 (30.77%) TOGAF
4 3 (23.08%) Agile
4 3 (23.08%) Azure
4 3 (23.08%) DevOps
4 3 (23.08%) Middleware
4 3 (23.08%) Stakeholder Engagement
4 3 (23.08%) Stakeholder Management
4 3 (23.08%) Technical Leadership
5 2 (15.38%) AWS Certification
5 2 (15.38%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
5 2 (15.38%) Azure Certification
5 2 (15.38%) CISSP

Principal Architect Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the UK excluding London by Category

The following tables expand on the one above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. They cover the same employment type, locality and period, with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each category:

Application Platforms
1 1 (7.69%) Confluence
Business Applications
1 4 (30.77%) SAP CO
1 4 (30.77%) SAP FI
1 4 (30.77%) SAP FI/CO
1 4 (30.77%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 4 (30.77%) AWS
2 3 (23.08%) Azure
3 1 (7.69%) Amazon CloudWatch
3 1 (7.69%) Amazon EC2
3 1 (7.69%) Amazon ECS
3 1 (7.69%) Amazon GuardDuty
3 1 (7.69%) AWS CloudFormation
3 1 (7.69%) AWS CodePipeline
3 1 (7.69%) AWS Control Tower
3 1 (7.69%) AWS Direct Connect
3 1 (7.69%) AWS Fargate
3 1 (7.69%) AWS Lambda
3 1 (7.69%) GitHub
3 1 (7.69%) GitHub Actions
3 1 (7.69%) IaaS
3 1 (7.69%) PaaS
3 1 (7.69%) SaaS
3 1 (7.69%) Serverless
3 1 (7.69%) Sumo Logic
3 1 (7.69%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 1 (7.69%) Firewall
1 1 (7.69%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (15.38%) Data Warehouse
2 1 (7.69%) Amazon QuickSight
2 1 (7.69%) Amazon RDS
2 1 (7.69%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 1 (7.69%) GitLab
1 1 (7.69%) Jenkins
1 1 (7.69%) JIRA
General
1 7 (53.85%) Finance
2 3 (23.08%) Public Sector
3 2 (15.38%) Banking
4 1 (7.69%) Digital Health
4 1 (7.69%) Social Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 3 (23.08%) Middleware
2 2 (15.38%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 4 (30.77%) Augmented Reality
2 2 (15.38%) Legacy Systems
Processes & Methodologies
1 6 (46.15%) Risk Management
2 5 (38.46%) Cost Management
3 4 (30.77%) Accounts Receivable
3 4 (30.77%) AI
3 4 (30.77%) Business Activity Monitoring
3 4 (30.77%) Cash Management
3 4 (30.77%) Cost Centre Accounting
3 4 (30.77%) Cost Control
3 4 (30.77%) Decision-Making
3 4 (30.77%) Generative AI
3 4 (30.77%) Profit Centre Accounting
3 4 (30.77%) Resource Allocation
3 4 (30.77%) TOGAF
4 3 (23.08%) Agile
4 3 (23.08%) DevOps
4 3 (23.08%) Stakeholder Engagement
4 3 (23.08%) Stakeholder Management
4 3 (23.08%) Technical Leadership
5 2 (15.38%) Collaborative Working
5 2 (15.38%) Cyber Resilience
Qualifications
1 2 (15.38%) AWS Certification
1 2 (15.38%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
1 2 (15.38%) Azure Certification
1 2 (15.38%) CISSP
1 2 (15.38%) SC Cleared
1 2 (15.38%) Security Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 2 (15.38%) QA
2 1 (7.69%) Disclosure Scotland
2 1 (7.69%) GDPR
System Software
1 2 (15.38%) Docker
Systems Management
1 2 (15.38%) Kubernetes
2 1 (7.69%) Terraform
Vendors
1 4 (30.77%) SAP
2 1 (7.69%) CloudEndure
2 1 (7.69%) Microsoft
2 1 (7.69%) Salesforce